


these bones (and the trembling)

by hitlikehammers



Series: Tonight, We Love (For Tomorrow The Heart May Break) [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 'Til the end of the line, 69 (Sex Position), Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Returns (Again), Bucky Barnes’ Thick-Ass Thighs, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Mid-Credits Scene, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Captain America: Civil War Fix-It, Credits Scene Fix-It, Emotional Sex, Extended Scene, Feelings, Fix-It, Love Like It’s The Last Night Left, M/M, Oral Sex, Resolved Sexual Tension, Steve Rogers Feels, Supersoldiers in Love, That Parkour-Flexibility Ain’t Just For The Battle Field, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:42:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6895984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>When Bucky straddles him—warm, so <span class="u">warm</span>, with no trace of cryo left in him, in them, in <span class="u">this</span>, oh, <span class="u">god</span>—but when Bucky straddles him, covers him with his weight not in threat but in promise, it is, without doubt, Steve's wildest dreams made flesh.<i></i></i><br/> <br/>Or: When Bucky comes out of stasis, they have just one night before the procedure. And just in case things go sideways? They’ll be <i>damned</i> if they waste it.<br/><span class="small">And if you require prior context for your sexing, that can be found here: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6834721">when my heart came back to me
</a></span><br/> </p><p> </p><p>  <b>SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	these bones (and the trembling)

**Author's Note:**

> Because the idea was already there, but I _did_ like [when my heart came back to me ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6834721) as a oneshot on its own, after all. 
> 
> So consider this as a oneshot that can also be a Part II of the aforementioned fic, if you like ;)
> 
> Title credit to this poem.

When Bucky straddles him—warm, so _warm_ , with no trace of cryo left in him, in them, in _this_ , oh, _god_ —but when Bucky straddles him, covers him with his weight not in threat but in promise, it is, without doubt, Steve's wildest dreams made flesh. 

“You don’t know what it does to me,” Bucky runs the tip of his nose down Steve’s neck, the line of his throat between the jump of his pulse, nuzzles the hollow between his collarbones before he presses his mouth, parted wide to the hard stretch of his sternum. “You have no fuckin’ _idea_.”

“No idea about what, Buck?” Steve gasps through a shiver at the contact, at the way Bucky’s breath ghosts upon his skin.

“This,” he kisses the shadow of Steve’’s clavicle, up one side and down the other. “You, and,” then he presses his mouth to the heave of Steve’s lungs and kisses the skin like reverence and light: 

“ _This_.” 

Steve whimpers as Bucky’s lashes tease, drag against him; as Bucky’s tongue peeks innocently with just the words he speaks.

“Worried over this chest for so goddamn long,” he breathes, and tilts his head side to side, presses his cheeks full against the lift of Steve’s own breathing, against the pounding of his desperate heart; “and now.”

Bucky glances up and Steve swallows hard at the way those eyes are blown wide, black with want and wonder: 

“And now this.” Bucky watches Steve as he presses a slow, sensuous kiss to the gap between lungs, outer rim of his pulse at its berth: “ _Unbelieveable_.” 

And Steve can’t help himself but to arch into the press of those lips, all while his heart crashes hard and fast against Bucky’s mouth like it wants to know him closer: testament to how goddamn much it _needs_.

“Always felt dirty as hell,” Bucky drags his teeth across Steve’s nipples, but only just; enough to send a shiver and a thrill to Steve’s groin but nothing more; “too ashamed to even think it at Confession.”

And Steve thinks how many times _he_ pictured Bucky in the pews, in the dark, just them alone: how many things _he_ had neglected to offer up for judgement.

“I’d stare, sometimes,” Bucky swipes his tongue around the pebbled blush of skin circling the ever-tightening buds, and Steve trembles for it; “the worst times,” and Bucky huffs heat straight onto that tight, wet skin, slick from his mouth, and Steve’s cock twitches painfully between their bodies, pressed flush. 

“And I’d _want_ so damn _bad_ ,” Bucky whispers, and _that’s_ his confession, Steve can feel it, and he’s breathless with what it means and what is said and never needed saying when he pants:

“It’s yours,” and his muscles almost ache with the strain of his heaving chest: Bucky’s. “Was always yours,” and it’s mayhem and melody and miracles all at once in the surge of his blood: Bucky’s, too. 

“Always will be yours.”

And either those are the magic words, or Bucky’s just as tired of waiting as Steve, because Bucky sucks Steve’s right nipple into his mouth until it hurts, grazes the skin with his teeth until it’s raw, and fondles the left between deft fingers, soft and tender for every spike of perfect pain: balanced. All things.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Steve wrenches his voice from the depths of his being, because if _this_ is too much, holy hell.

What’s gonna come of him by the time they’re done?

“God,” Bucky purrs, his hair tickling Steve’s skin as he kisses, soothes the flesh he’s just been ravaging. “You moan pretty as all hell, Stevie.”

And Steve doesn’t even plan to, doesn’t have to: he moans all the longer, all the deeper, just at those words. 

“Been running what that sound might be like through my head for years,” Bucky breathes, and Steve begins to feel him slither slowly down his body, hand deft as anything as he unbuttons, unzips, undoes Steve for more than just his clothes. “I ain’t never come up with something that sweet.”

And Steve only shifts his hips in aid of Bucky’s mission to strip him bare: it doesn’t take long.

It doesn’t feel much different, really: he’s always been naked under Bucky’s gaze. Vulnerable to a fault, but kept all the safer for it.

“Beautiful,” Bucky exhales, as he takes Steve in slow, languid, eyes roaming like they’ve got a lifetime, and that’s possible. That could be a truth.

Maybe.

“You’re so goddamn beautiful I might just cry with it,” Bucky rasps, and fuck, but he sounds like he means it, and if he does, if he starts then so will Steve, and they can’t, not yet.

“Buck,” Steve hisses through clenched teeth, head tossed back at just the emanating warmth of Bucky’s body, Bucky’s living-breathing presence so close to the free-straining length of his prick. “Buck, touch me.”

“Where?” Bucky asks, like he can’t think where to even begin, and oh. 

There’s only one answer, there.

“ _Everywhere_.”

And Bucky doesn’t hesitate. Bucky doesn’t pause, or think, or wait to breathe.

He tilts his chin and parts his lips and swallows Steve with a broad palm like fire against Steve’s thigh and fuck, _fuck_ —Steve thought the serum gave the world its rightful color.

Little did he fucking _know_.

Bucky’s mouth on his dick is a goddamn revelation: it is immediate and it is blinding; it is intoxicating like Steve didn’t think he could feel anymore and Steve’s teeth clatter to the drum of his pulse when his mouth’s closed between gasps but mostly his jaw drops wide, panting for air and wanting more than that, so much more…

He’s overcome with it, suddenly. Absolutely railroaded with the need to touch, to feel, to smell, to taste, to hear that voice and to know it moans for _him_ , he—

The movement in his muscles is almost automatic, yet fluid in a whole new way: battle has honed him, sharpened him but this is all soft corners, rounded edges, hands on Bucky’s skin the whole fucking time in the instant it takes between Bucky’s hot mouth on him and pulling off to lick, to ease away from ending too quick: it’s feeling the sharp intake of Bucky’s lungs like a swansong and an epitaph and communion, baptism in a breath. It is Steve lifting from his lips and feeling Bucky’s wet chin, the scrape of bare stubble against the underside of his length, rolling the tight ache of his balls as he slides down, flips without once letting his hands stray from Bucky’s body, without once letting Bucky’s mouth stray from the vee of his groin, until he’s fumbling with the drawstring on Bucky’s pants, loose enough to pull down in one firm tug and then his own mouth’s got Bucky, his every inhale is filled with the heat of arousal, of sweat and need and Bucky’s thick against the insides of cheeks, Bucky’s heavy on his tongue, and fuck. _Fuck_ —

“Oh, good _god_ ,” Bucky moans at the base of Steve’s cock, and the way his head tilts back for sensation drags his hair loose against Steve’s straining length to the tip, and yes, _yes_.

Seeing, touching. The scent of him, the taste: the _sound_.

And Bucky’s gasping and thrusting ever so slightly, ever just beyond even his control into Steve’s mouth, while his own mouth alternates between licking and sucking and teasing Steve’s cock, and Steve’s stepped out a time or two, enough to know what he’s doing, at least, but he’s never had the pleasure of tasting someone he loves like this, of holding and breathing and burying not just his face or his body but his whole fucking heart in the process of bringing a single person to pleasure, and release, and the hope that Bucky knows, knows that Steve would tear down the stars for him. Would damn everything to hell, for Bucky Barnes.

His own soul be damned.

“Thought all that twirly-flexy-bullshit was just for show,” Bucky pants, and the heavy puff of the words shivers up Steve’s spine and makes him gasp around Bucky’s dick, makes his teeth graze every so slightly across that skin.

“Efficient,” Steve laughs, the joy of it effervescent; presses words into the crease of Bucky’s thigh. “But I never really thought out the wide range of benefits.”

Because sucking Bucky while Bucky’s sucking him, teasing the leak of his slit with fucking _vigor_ : that's better than dodging any bullet, better than taking out an army single handed. 

It's better than just about _anything_. 

“Let’s start thinking on that now, shall we?” Bucky breathes, a thought and a sigh; a tremble that Steve catches and sucks down past the pulse in his own throat to the tremble of his own heart until both shivers come in time, until Steve’s pulled to the brink but won’t tip until Bucky is, too, until Bucky falls in his arms and Jesus, Jesus—

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Steve gasps sloppily as he coaxes Bucky towards his climax and then swallows him whole to take what comes, and never waste a single moment, a single drop.

Bucky pulls off Steve first—and Steve catches a glimpse of him, lips pearlescent and all Steve wants is to lick them clean and taste himself off Bucky’s tongue, so that’s what he does: greedy and so full of need, scrambling on his knees and pressing spent dicks between shaky thighs as he climbs on top of Bucky and locks their lips together, firm and fast and fucking _perfect_ , and nothing, not a goddamn part of Steve Rogers has ever been perfect, before this moment.

Before _he_ could be drunk from Bucky’s lips.

“The mouth on you,” Bucky gasps, hand twining in Steve’s hair as he takes that mouth and ravages, give as good as he gets with tongue and teeth, and maybe he means the kisses, maybe he means the swearing, maybe he likes tasting himself on Steve’s lips just as much as Steve likes the reverse: but fuck if it matters which—fuck if it is matter one _bit_. 

“Hot as _hell_ , Steve,” and Bucky catches Steve’s lower lip between his and sucks hard enough to physically pull the moan from him, and when he rolls his hips against Steve’s with a natural sort of sense, a familiarity they don’t actually have except that it feels more right than any other thing, more like home and peace and light and wonder and whatever infinity holds in its hands: it feels like _that_ when Steve gasps out a part of his soul into Bucky’s waiting mouth at the weight of his cock already stiffening again, already needing Steve as much as Steve needs him—

It is the way the world was meant to be, Steve thinks, and he wonders if all the horrors they’ve faced were maybe just the universe spouting hate over the wrongness of them being separate, of them being apart, of overlooking the one crucial thing they were too blind to see. Pushing them unto breaking, until there was nothing else.

Nowhere else but here, but _this_.

“You’re perfect,” Steve gasps open mouthed against Bucky’s jaw line, rubs his own cheek up and down until his skin is drawn red and raw with the proof of this body beside his body, beneath his body. “Bucky, you’re, you’re _everything_ —”

Bucky reaches, and pulls Steve down into a kiss that’s all claiming and affirmation, that’s all fool-proof and decadent light and Steve falls into it, lets Bucky’s strength, his dexterity, his grace even one hand down move them, ease Steve onto his back once more with Bucky’s chest against his chest and it’s the world pressed against his heart, just so, and the revelation of endless life and death all at once.

Steve never wants to be outside of this space, these breaths, that _weight_.

“Stevie,” Bucky nuzzles at Steve’s chin; “can I…”

And it’s unspoken but wholly known: they’re both hard again, wet at the slits. They both need.

“Please, Buck, _please_ ,” Steve nods, mouths at any bit of Bucky’s skin his lips can catch, mindless: desperate. Lifting from his heels to the balls of his feet. 

“ _Now_.”

“Don’t gotta ask me twice, baby,” Bucky kisses him, eyes smiling in the place of slick, parted lips.

And Bucky lifts on his haunches, those impossibly muscular legs guiding him, and Steve keens for the lack of touch and reaches: hands at Bucky’s shoulders and down, one against his arm and one at the gap, pressed instead to his ribs on the left, measuring every breath and heartbeat and oh, that’s better, oh, the little trips and skipping and trilled-triple-beats against his palm as Bucky places his fingers at Steve’s lips to coat, to slick; as he reaches and teases the tight ring of Steve’s entrance, tender but not slow as Steve begs, as Steve cries out with no thought of sense save for the touch of Bucky within him, inside him, everywhere—

“I’m ready,” he gasps, with the last words left to him in the technicolor whirl of feeling, this unprecedented loss of self in being taken in so wholly, so joyously by the only heart he’s ever wanted to know.

And Bucky looks at him, pupils blown with desire and a depth of need to both have and to protect, and god.

Steve could break for that look. Steve maybe already has, except: no. No.

He breaks when Bucky slides into him, one clean thrust, flesh to flesh until there’s no give, no space left to take: no halves, here.

Not anymore.

“Steve, Steve,” Bucky’s voice is so rough, so raw. Steve watches his wide eyes: he’s broken open, too. 

Thank _god_. He’s inside Steve, now, but if their pieces are pressed together, here: if they’re broken in this, together, _by_ this and its weight, its significance: they’ll come together here, too, and they’ll fit together for always—their fragments swirled and fused together never to be alone, never again to be less than two souls made one and strong and _loved_ —

They’ll live inside each other, now. Always.

Steve breathes new air, at that. Steve’s heart beats new rhythms, for that.

“Jesus Christ, you feel,” Bucky sobs into Steve’s open mouth; “you feel...”

“You feel like fucking _home_ ,” Steve speaks against the corner of Bucky’s mouth, and Bucky’s cadence, rocking into Steve and driving him to ruin and wonder at once—that cadence falters, and Bucky meets his eyes, and the recognition there steals Steve’s breath. The understanding there is _everything_.

“Yes,” Bucky whispers, and somehow balances his body to reach and caress Steve’s cheek, to marvel that he _is_ : “Yes, I—”

“Harder,” Steve reaches, draws Bucky’s mouth to his. “ _Harder_ , Buck, make me only know you.” Steve kisses Bucky’s palm, and braces it open over the pump of the blood in Steve’s chest.

“Only ever you.”

“Steve,” Bucky looks at him wide-eyed, for a moment unsure; “I don’t—”

“You won’t,” Steve answers, because whatever he doesn’t want, whatever that unsaid thing is, Steve knows with all of his being, with his whole heart and soul that it can’t touch them, not here. Not like _this_.

“You _can’t_ , I am, I just,” Steve’s voice breaks, and he screws his eyes against what it means for so much feeling to flow in his veins for so long: it’s useless.

He lets the tears fall.

“I need you,” Steve says, shattered with it. “I’ve needed you for so long, Bucky, please, _please_.”

And Bucky crushes their mouths together and sinks into him, snaps his hips to the cheeks of Steve’s ass over and again like momentum failing entropy, exceeding it, transcending it until it is a fact, this presence, this sensation, this heady knowing of what it is to come home and be whole; until the skin tingles, raw, and for as much as Steve thinks the loss of Bucky filling him whole and full might kill him every time those hips pull back, never once, never _once_ is Bucky fully gone—the tip of him always at the smooth ring of Steve’s hole, never slipping out entirely, like maybe Bucky needs not to leave him as much as Steve needs the same, and for the first time in Steve’s life those thoughts aren’t just fantasy, aren’t just his own heart’s needs: no.

No, for the first time, that might just be the god’s-honest truth.

Steve comes with a splintering of consciousness and a cry that maybe has no sound; he can’t hear beyond his own thundering heart, beyond the sharp breath from Bucky’s mouth at his ear as Bucky falls against him, chest to chest and Steve holds him, spills between them and Bucky twitches, gasps, and against Steve’s sternum he can feel the catch in Bucky’s pulse when he comes apart, when he fills Steve with fire and Steve understands what oblivion means, finally—nothing like he’d thought: never cold, never heartbreaking.

Never alone.

Steve’s lungs burn the way a sunrise steals the dew: beauty that overrides teardrops and shivers golden up and down his spine, against every line of him, every curve as Bucky rides his climax into Steve’s body, gives Steve everything he’s got and Steve sears with it, willingly. Wantonly.

Wanting _more_. 

“Wait,” Steve hisses, hand bracing Bucky’s shoulder as Bucky starts to ease out, keeping him exactly where he is. Bucky looks at him, even the question gleaming gorgeous in those eyes.

“Don’t move,” Steve breathes, pushing Bucky back into the slick surface of his chest and breathing in to remind himself that that weight, that presence there is real.

It’s _all_ real.

Bucky frowns; his brow creases—worried. “Did I—”

“No, no, it’s,” Steve kisses him sloppy and frantic and harsh. “It’s amazing. It was better than, than, you’re, it’s...”

Steve’s eyes shide closed as he tries to breathe around what he can’t say, to find whatever he _can_ say that’ll ease the tension in Bucky’s gaze

It’s a very simple truth, in the end.

“I don’t want to lose it yet,” Steve whispers, and Bucky’s face goes lax, his eyes go wide.

“Oh,” Bucky breathes, tender. His palm comes to Steve’s cheek, thumb lining the bones. Reverent, though fuck knows why; but Steve’ll take it. “Okay.”

Goddamn right, Steve’ll take it. 

“Alright,” Steve whispers, gasps for breath for no other reason than that the world has changed, shifted. Aligned as it was always meant to; finally able to rest easy after so long. “Alright, move.”

He can feel it in the air, now. He can take it when Bucky pulls out. 

“Steve,” Bucky breathes low, hot as he strokes, traces lines on Steve's skin, mouths against his jaw. “I love you, Steve, I fucking _love_ —”

Steve can't help but take those lips against his own: greedy. And allowed to be. His heart is a tangible thing, and the moment Bucky tastes it on Steve's tongue is more of a gift than anything else; save maybe the moan that follows—fulfilled. 

“I love you,” Steve murmurs against Bucky's lips. “I’ve always loved you and,” Steve doesn't know if he blushes, if the flush hits his cheeks, his neck, his chest: he's already so _warm_. 

“I had to taste it, had to taste you saying it,” Steve breathes into that smile, that smile that tastes exactly how Steve imagined, except the sweetness is homemade preserves stolen from the edge of a pan; the tang like stolen orange slices; the richness like butter on warm baked bread; the softness like sunrays just through the clouds—precious. 

Better than Steve’s mind could ever make up. 

“I had to make sure it was real.” 

And Bucky smiles all the softer, all the warmer sunshine rays: gold that seeps into Steve’s skin and makes him gilded: fortified. Protected. Desired and shining with unfathomable love. 

“Only real thing, Stevie,” he runs fingers through Steve's hair and then brings Steve's hand to his mouth to kiss, to trace the curve of his lips before he sets Steve palm against his chest. 

“Only real thing in the whole goddamn world.”

And yes. Yes, that’s.

This, them. This is real. 

This _is_ the world.

“If,” Bucky swallows, and Steve feels it shudder through him, feels the moment that the heart beneath his hand sees fit to shudder, too. 

“If I come out of it, tomorrow, and I don’t—”

“No.”

Bucky looks hard at him, but steve ploughs on, shaking his head hard, firm.

“I’ve put enough of my life into tomorrows that never made it here, that I, that were,” Steve protests, holds fast against all those murmurs. Those could bes. 

“No.” Steve shakes his head harder. Grips Bucky _harder_. 

“We have tonight. We have each _other_.” 

All that matters. All that ever mattered. 

The world will turn and end, upon that fact. 

“If it goes wrong,” Bucky says, eyes full of pain that doesn't belong but that he won't put away, because maybe he always had more restraint in it, sure, but Bucky's as goddamn stubborn as Steve's ever been; “don’t let me hurt you.”

“Bucky,” Steve sighs, bites his lip against a sob for all of the lingering doubts still in the heart he loves more than his own. 

“Buck, I’m so in love with you that it _already_ hurts. I’ve _been_ so in love with you, it’s been hurting me for years, but now,” Steve cradles that warm-beloved face. “Now, you’re, we’re...”

Steve looks at them, the stretch of their bare skin, chest against chest: rushes of blood and the beautiful mess they've left between them, piecing together broken hearts and yielding _love_ , pure and endless, blinding for their efforts, for their strain. 

“We have this,” Steve tells him in earnest. “We’ve _earned_ this, do you understand me?”

And Bucky just looks at him like he hung the moon, and Steve just basks in him like he placed the stars, like he holds the sun in his palm and all life exists because Bucky’s breathing, Bucky’s shining: they make each other whole. 

“And you really did take all the fuckin’ stupid with you if you think I’ll let whatever comes for us in the morning change that,” Steve hisses low, a threat and a promise: against faltering. For keeping, always. “I didn’t want this for you to begin with, any of it, but _this_ —”

He puts his hand back to Bucky's heart and stares into Bucky's eyes until he's sure Bucky deigns to recognise Steve's own soul laid bare: absolute truth. 

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll figure something else out.”

And Bucky's eyes go to Steve's eyes, to his hand on Bucky’s own pounding heart. 

It gives Steve courage beyond anything he's ever felt. Courage enough to speak of what it means to unravel; to risk the edge of shattering. 

“And if it works, too _well_ ,” Steve’s voice only shakes a little in giving voice to that unspeakable _maybe_ ; what it'll mean to lose again, after _this_. 

Steve's voice only shakes a little. 

“I will do whatever is in my power to give you the life, and the freedom, that you deserve.”

And Steve will. It'll kill him, but he's tasted immortality in these moments, on Bucky's skin. He'll do it. And—

“And maybe,” Steve breathes out slow, voice small as he watches his hands on Bucky's chest rise, and fall, and rise. 

He looks up again, before the fall. 

“Just maybe, if you want to know me again, if you came to care for me at all, we—”

Bucky clasps his hand around Steve's— _tight_ —and curls his legs under Steve's, flips them with the strength of his thighs and ends up on top Steve again: but not once does he stop holding Steve's hand to his heart. 

“You’re right.”

And Bucky kisses him in the way Steve imagines could start and end wars, lives, worlds. 

His heart pumps hard. Both their hearts do. 

“We have tonight,” Bucky speaks against Steve lips, their bodies flush against each other again, as they should be. Just as they belong. 

“ _Fuck_ tomorrow,” Bucky snarls against the world, against fate, against whatever passes as god or makes space exist between them, ever. 

“We have _tonight_.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
